The countries of Central and Eastern Europe have displayed widely disparate trade performance since the beginning of the transition. The Czech Republic and Hungary have had some success moving into the production and export of more technologically-sophisticated, higher value-added goods, while...

In the past 20 years the average real earnings of Chinese urban male workers have increased by 350 per cent. Accompanying this unprecedented growth is a considerable increase in earnings inequality. Between 1988 and 2007 the variance of log earnings increased from 0.27 to 0.48, a 78 per cent...

This paper uses survey data for 60,000 households from 29 transition economies in 2006 and 2010 to explore how the use of banking services is related to household characteristics, as well as to bank ownership, deposit insurance and creditor protection. At the household level we find that the...

We investigate whether information sharing among banks has affected credit market performance in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, using a large sample of firm-level data. Our estimates show that information sharing is associated with improved availability...

This Paper explains both the onset of the financial crisis in 1998 and the striking economic recovery afterwards in Russia and other Former Soviet Union (FSU) economies. Before the crisis banks do not lend to the real sector of the economy, and firms use non-bank finance - including trade...

We investigate how bank competition affects the efficiency of credit allocation, using a model of spatial competition. Our analysis shows that bad loans are more likely the larger the number of banks competing for customers. We study further how many banks will be active if market entry is not...

This paper looks at empirical evidence and economic theory in order to find some guidelines for building the institutions of a financial system. It argues that in the countries in transition, priority should be given to stimulating information generation about investment opportunities, and to...

We study the determinants for the sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads of five Euro-area countries (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain) in the post-Lehman-Brothers period. We find that there are regime switches in the process of sovereign CDS spread changes. We consider three...

This paper interprets the existing evidence on enterprise restructuring in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Despite differences in restructuring policies, the pattern of observed restructuring appears similar in the three countries. Contrary to initial expectations, managers of SOEs have...

This paper focuses on some of the major problems of the Hungarian banking system and investigates the possible ways to deal with these problems. It discusses the issue of bank restructuring, concentrating on the large commercial banks for which direct or indirect state ownership is decisive....